Foxconn

Just a few weeks ago, Foxconn was apologising profusely for poor performance as rival contract manufacturer Pegatron was riding high on reports that it had won out over Foxconn, Apple’s main manufacturer, for a contract to make Apple’s upcoming cheaper version of its iPhone.

Things have changed. Now it’s Pegatron’s shares that are falling, battered by local reports that it is will not get as many orders as initially forecast, with Foxconn getting them instead. Read more

The stereotypical Foxconn worker is a low-paid Chinese labourer, coming from a rural Chinese province to work on one of the contract manufacturers’ assembly lines making iPhones.

But the Taiwanese company also employs thousands of mid-level and senior engineers and designers tasked with developing the processes needed to put together electronics. Competing for those workers, says founder and head Terry Gou, is increasingly difficult, as the US and, in particular, Chinese companies try to poach them. Read more

Foxconn, the contract manufacturer whose biggest customer is Apple, is preparing genuinely representative labour union elections in its factories in China for the first time, a powerful sign of the changes in the workshop of the world demanded by an increasingly restive workforce.

With the shock of the Apple-Samsung verdict still reverberating around the smartphone world, here comes a sharp reminder of the fact while these two giants may have their problems, life is much harder for their competitors.

Shares in Foxconn International Holdings (FIH) plunged on Tuesday after it reported a record first-half net loss. The company, the Hong Kong-listed subsidiary of Hon Hai Precision, is only one chunk of the Taiwanese parent group’s empire. It’s not the bit that works for Apple: FIH’s customers are Apple’s hard-pressed rivals, led by Nokia. Enough said. Read more

Foxconn, the Taiwanese company most famous for assembling Apple gadgets, has confirmed that it is looking to open a factory in Indonesia, although it has not yet decided what products will be made there.

Taiwanese have for many years been building factories and selling products in southeast Asia, and recent trade data show how the region has become increasingly important as exports to Europe and China begin to slow. Read more

But the Apple empire will not see a serious dent in its profitability, as its high-tech competitors will have to follow suit. And it’s a price worth paying to keep on the right side of consumers who don’t like the idea of buying iPhones made by slaves – and of the Chinese authorities who have backed pay rises for workers to help spread the benefits of economic growth. Read more

Hon Hai has announced it is raising the base salary of its 1m-plus workers by between 16 to 25 per cent, the first major pay hike since it doubled pay for operators and line managers in 2010 following a tragic series of suicides at its plants.

With Hon Hai, the Foxconn parent, and other Apple suppliers’ plants currently undergoing an audit by the Fair Labour Association, that’s good news, isn’t it? Not so for investors, according to HSBC head of Taiwan research Jenny Lai. Read more

Is the glass half full or half empty with Hon Hai? The world’s biggest contract electronics maker – and controlling shareholder in Foxconn – has faced a number of new challenges recently, but since the beginning of the year its share price has risen 27 per cent. Read more

So with at least one of those three resolved when Ma was re-elected to a second term last Saturday, Gou on Sunday took a well-deserved break and hosted Hon Hai’s annual family day for staff in Taiwan, at the Taipei Zoo. What could possibly go wrong? Read more

It’s a new year, but for Foxconn, the old problems seem to be coming back all over again. It turns out that early last week, at least 150 workers at the Taiwanese group’s factory in the Central Chinese city of Wuhan threatened collective suicide in a pay dispute gone wrong.

After a Chinese internet post with pictures was picked up by Taiwanese media and then by Western blogs this week, Foxconn hurried to say late Wednesday that the dispute had been settled “peacefully” the same day, and Microsoft, one of the companies whose products are manufactured at the Wuhan plant, said it was looking into working conditions there. Read more

Ouch. First the suicides. Then the plant explosion. Now Foxconn International, the scandal-hit Taiwanese company that toils in the shadow of high-profile clients such as Apple, is being stripped of its blue-chip status after it was dropped on Tuesday from Hong Kong’s benchmark Hang Seng index. Read more

When Foxconn was hit by a string of suicides among its workers earlier this year, the company’s first reaction was to try and wait for the trouble to just go away.

Not anymore. Wednesday afternoon, the once so media-shy company – which makes a major portion of the world’ s iPhones and other electronics gadgets – put itself in the limelight with a nationwide rally for its 800,000 workers. Read more

Contract electronics maker Foxconn is going west… and north. After a spate of suicides at its Shenzhen factory complex, a series of wage hikes, and a profit warning, the company is looking for pastures new.

It doesn’t come as a huge surprise. A number of economists predicted that rising wage demands in China’s southern manufacturing heartland would force Chinese companies – and multinationals – to head inland. But details of the potential new sites suggest that by moving away from the coast, companies will still find China as competitive as anywhere else in Asia. That’s if they can actually decide where to set up shop. Read more

Governments fighting inflation might normally be expected to challenge companies jacking up wages by over 100 per cent. But Beijing does not seem to be unhappy about the moves by Hon Hai, the Taiwanese company hit by a spate of suicides at its Chinese plants, to increase minimum pay by 30 per cent from July 1, and by a further 66 per cent in October for workers meeting performance standards.

The deaths of 10 workers puts Hon Hai, together with its subsidiary Foxconn International, in a category of its own. However, analysts say that these increases will be welcome to the Chinese authorities, both in themselves and in the precedents they set for other employers. Beijing wants to improve living standards for the tens of millions of migrant workers employed in China’s manufacturing plants and to boost consumer demand to ease global economic imbalances. Read more

Being forced to raise wages by the levels that Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn, has done over the past few weeks is usually bad for the bottom line, especially for a company that operates on large volumes and razor-thin margins.

Indeed, some analysts had downgraded Hon Hai – or at least spoke alarmingly of how increasing labour costs would hurt margins – after the world’s biggest contract electronics maker last week said it would increase the minimum wages of its workers by 30 per cent from July 1.

Yet yesterday’s surprise announcement that Hon Hai would now give workers who reach certain performance standards another 66 per cent pay rise from October 1 prompted quite a different reaction. Read more

Is a 30 per cent wage increase a lot? For most people in the workforce, the answer would be an unequivocal ‘yes’. For large, hi-tech manufacturing companies, however, the answer is very different indeed, according to Joseph Hsu, chairman and chief executive of Taiwan’s Micro-Star International, or MSI. Read more

Every T-shirt is ironed at least once in its lifetime – as part of the packaging process. At a large textile plant in southern China, employing tens of thousands of workers, young men iron T-shirt after T-shirt at an amazing clip. Their jerky movements are so quick and efficient, it is like watching a video on fast forward.

They do so for eight hours a day, and longer when working overtime. Their piece-rate pay structure is a function of output. The faster they work, the more T-shirts they iron, the more money they make. Read more